NEW TIMES
LOS ANGELES
John Gilmore
Books
Available at
KOMA BOOKSTORE
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LAID BARE John Gilmore Skip Heller |
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THE FIRST CD issued by Stuart Swezey's AMOK BOOKS slits open the pulsing heart of darkness that is La-La Land, leaving that putrid, cancer-ridden organ gaping and propped for examination. |
The vivisectors du jour are JOHN GILMORE, debonair cult figure known for his surgical explorations of such macabre topics as the Manson family slayings and James Dean's untimely death, and SKIP HELLER, a local cocktail-jazz stylist known for finger-poppin' compositions mixing sonic echoes of Duke Ellington, Les Baxter, and Frank Zappa.
They make an interesting pair. Heller plays sorcerer's apprentice to Gilmore’ been-there-done-that savant. Essentially Gilmore reads sometimes spooky, sometimes insightful passages from his books - Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder; Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip; and others - while Heller grooves with creepy, Twin Peaks-like background music. The result is reminiscent of Lydia Lunch's dark, saxophone-backed performance-art rantings, engaging as an exercise in both spoken word and orchestration.
Part of the fun of listening to Laid
Bare is imagining Gilmore before you, dressed no doubt in black and
leather, his handsome, silver-topped visage emerging from the
inky-blackness of some smoky little club while Heller leads a polished
jazz combo in the dim light behind him. While percussion patters lightly,
Gilmore tells of Charles Manson, who "said he liked the back doorway of
life and could always get in through the back door." With sax wailing and
unseen hands clapping a beat, Gilmore evokes a young Tuesday Weld and a
Cheshire Cat-like Jack Nicholson attending the same Hollywood bacchanalia
as Gilmore and Dennis Hopper. There’s not a dark corner left unexplored as
Gilmore lays down the legends of Eartha Kitt, James Dean, Elizabeth Short,
Barbara Payton, and Janis Joplin. He seems to have known them all and
slept with a good number of them. It's Gilmore's film, so to speak - and
Heller's written its loungey, space-age
score.
--by Stephen Lemons - New Times Los Angeles
The Laid Bare CD is available
at
Amok
Books and Dionysus
Records